1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wavelength path switching node apparatus and wavelength path allocation method in an optical communication network (i.e., a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) network) that employs a wavelength division multiplexing transmission scheme.
Priority is claimed on Japanese patent application No. 2003-53249, filed Feb. 28, 2003, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventional wavelength path switching node apparatuses monitor traffic intended to be output from a plurality of apparatuses (for example, from IP routers) that accommodate local nodes to a WDM network, and perform autonomous control so as to allocate a wavelength path based on the results of this monitoring (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2001-333045). In the WDM network, a pair of wavelength path switching node apparatuses dynamically adds and cuts wavelength paths of facing intervals thereof without performing signaling. As a result, the structure required to perform the signaling can be simplified and an improvement in wavelength usage efficiency can be achieved by a statistical multiplexing effect. In addition, wavelength paths set over a plurality of intervals are dealt with by connecting a pair of wavelength path switching node apparatuses in tandem.
However, in the above described conventional technology, because wavelength paths are increased or decreased using traffic formed by a plurality of packets as monitoring units, it is not possible to control the allocation of wavelength paths by following traffic variations in the packet units.